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Wednesday, November 25, 2015

SPOILERS: Grayson #14

SERIOUSLY. WE ALL KNOW HER NAME ISN'T LUKA. WE EVEN LEARN THAT THIS ISSUE. SO AGAIN, I ASK: WHAT'S THE POINT?! WHY NOT PLAY THE INTERESTING ANGLE FOR WHAT IT IS?!

Gaaaaaaah!!!

The Spoilers:

Remember Dr. Dedalus? Got his brain impaled by Damian? Yeah, well, flash back, he's got a story about Spyral, himself as Agent 0 and what he decided to do when he found out he got Alzheimer's, and that was to put his consciousness in one of his daughters Elizabeth or fucking Katarina. Where the fuck Luka comes from, I don't know! Anyways... while one becomes the new Dedalus, the other becomes Leviathan, set to fight their sister or something. KATHY KANE.

Anyways, Dick is on the mission looking for any info he can get on KATHY, but he, Tiger and Ladytron are getting attacked by Spyral robots. Actiony stuff happens and when Dick finds the chance, he knocks out Tiger and uses his Hypnos on Ladytron to use her as his own personal hacking device.

Spyral HQ starts questioning Helena where Agent 37 is claiming he's gone native and to terminate him immediately. Helena doesn't want to, but is backed into a corner a activates the nanobots on Dick in an attempt to kill him. Thankfully, Dick uses Ladytron as an EMP to disable them before they can do so, but Tiger comes back and Dick pleads with him to help stop Spyral.

END.

The Opinion:

Not even going to address the Kathy stuff, because whatever. Said my part. Anyways, this issue, while great as ever, pretty much summed up everything I don't like about this post Helena leader of Spyral direction of the book... but I still think it's fantastic and one of DC's best books? Weird, I know.

So I never liked the idea of Helena becoming Dick's boss, right? The dynamic of them in the field together was fucking-fantastic and Tiger hasn't really done anything that interesting other than getting punched in the face. It felt as if there was a lot left on the table prior to the status quo shift between the growing of Dick and Helena's working (and extracurricular) relationship and just basic characterization of Helena and her past. But now with this issue's developments, it seems as if the busboys have made their way to the table and cleaned it all off and there's a chance we'll never get what we should have in the first place. Having Dick be an enemy of Spyral is far less interesting than him being an Agent for them. If they keep getting further and further away from Spyral to the point where let's say he "beats them" then what's next? Going back to just patrolling the streets as Nightwing? Fuck that, going back to "generic vigilante" status is far less interesting than what this book does.

I realize that this is a lot of thought based off speculation, but with each issue, it seems like the book continues to go down this worst case scenario path that I've laid out for myself.

It also doesn't help that since Dick got reveled to believe, damn near every other book has been playing it super fast and loose with his character and Spyral, but that's not necessarily this book's problem.

So in summary... I kind of hate the direction this book is going but I still think it's fantastic?

Also, absolutely zero set up for Robin War... no book that's tying in really did a great job of that...

1 comment
:

The only thing I can conjecture about the "Luka Netz" identity non-so-fake out is that the writers are assuming newer readers may not have read Batman, Inc., so it's kinda, sorta a mystery to them? Even so, not great rationale, regardless. Or there's the possibility that they're trying some way too "clever" bait and switch and it really is a new character -- which also would make no sense because what's the point of a mystery character whose identity we can't guess? I realize you've opined on this before, but I'm also perplexed at the choice being made here.